


Love And Other Bruises

by reitoei



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 10:18:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11965353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reitoei/pseuds/reitoei
Summary: Dirk is the bright spot in Todd's life. That doesn't mean Todd is allowed to want him.





	Love And Other Bruises

**Author's Note:**

> This is the soulmate identifying mark fic that no one asked for. I'm not a write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person but that's what happened here, which I suppose is appropriate in a fandom for the world's most impulsive detective and his wacky hijinks.
> 
> Please enjoy <3

 

It’s not that Todd’s never had friends. It’s just that it’s been a while—his last friends were probably his band mates, and he was never that close with them anyway. After the incident they pretty much stopped talking to him. Then he had a few buddies in college but they didn’t stick around after he dropped out, cause it was weird to hang out with a stoner in a shitty band whose life plan was to catch a break and make it big. For a while now Amanda’s been the closest thing he has to a _friend_ , and she’s family so it doesn’t count.

So it’s kind of weird when he finds himself eating breakfast with Dirk and Farah one day, a little after they’ve run an ad in the paper for the agency and a little before their first case, drinking orange juice and rolling his eyes as Dirk goes on about the menu at this place and really, genuinely enjoying himself. Yeah, so Amanda’s still hardly talking to him and they’re still reeling from the time-travel, soul-swapping mishap during which a lot of people ended up _actually dead, holy shit_ , and maybe they haven’t gotten a single real client yet, but it’s not all bad. Dirk is shovelling his potatoes onto Todd’s plate and Farah’s drinking her terrible coffee and not scowling, and he’s pretty content for once in his life.

Naturally, the universe has to go and fuck it up.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Dirk is saying through a mouthful of eggs, looking up at Farah and then Todd. He gesticulates with his fork, egg bits flying off dangerously.

Time slows, and Todd grips his orange juice like a lifeline. Of all the things in his life, he would have put this one last on the list of things to come back and haunt him. He’d come to terms with it a long time ago; he’d been done with it.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if the universe brought us a _Marcham vs Hayes_ case?” Dirk goes on, oblivious. “It’s like the pinnacle of universal connectedness! Two people, total strangers, connected in the most intimate way just because of a funny little mark.”

Todd and Farah are silent. Dirk stuff some bacon in his mouth and looks up at the two of them, eyebrows raised quizzically.

“Did I say something wrong?” He mumbles through his mouthful. Todd opens his mouth, but words fail him so he closes it again.

Farah breaks the silence. “ _Marcham vs Hayes_ was fake.”

“Of course it wasn’t!” Dirk exclaims, then he looks at her, really looks, and sits up straighter. “You don’t believe it really happened,” he states, putting down his fork.

“It was just a stunt,” she says. “Some crackpot lawyer wanted more media attention on his case and he made it all up for a nice fat pay check.”

“I’m disappointed.” Dirk frowns at his plate. “I thought after all we’ve been through that you’d have a little more faith in the universe.”

“Sure,” Farah says with a stiff shrug. “I just don’t have much faith in people.”

“Todd?” Dirk says. He’s got the beginnings of a pout going, the kind of thing that would normally make Todd simultaneously embarrassed for him and flustered by such a wanton show of emotion. But there’s something clamping down on his chest that makes it hard to feel anything right now. “You believe, don’t you?”

Farah’s eyes are on him, sharp and inquisitive, as he tries and fails to respond.

“Nah,” he eventually croaks, and Dirk’s pout worsens. “That stuff is all just some old story. It’s not real.”

“It _is_ ,” Dirk grumbles, prying the little cubes of unripe melon off the skewer on his plate. “I can’t believe you two.”

“That’s not how love works,” Farah says shortly, and blessedly, the subject is dropped.

-

Amanda’s the only one who knows.

Todd has never told anyone, ever. Not even Lillian Schwartz, his first girlfriend, who at fifteen he was pretty sure he was in love with; or Alison Richards, his last girlfriend, who was probably the closest he’d ever actually come to a serious relationship.

What was there to tell, anyway? _Oh yeah, one day I might leave you for a total stranger who just happens to have the same weird-ass tattoo as me._

It’s not _real_. It doesn’t matter. Amanda doesn’t have one, and neither did any of his girlfriends, and neither did any of his buddies. When people ask about it he tells them it’s just a thing he got done when he was eighteen.

-

But the subject keeps coming up. Typical of Dirk, he can’t let anything go—things percolate in his brain until he arrives at a satisfactory conclusion, reality and other peoples’ discomfort be damned. He and Todd are sitting on the couch in Todd’s apartment waiting for a phone call, wilting in the heat, and he rolls his head over to look at Todd.

“You really don’t believe in soulmates?”

Todd goes very still, and then makes a concerted effort to roll his eyes. “Come on, it’s like asking if I believe in Santa Claus,” he says.

“I mean, Farah I sort of get. She seems a bit affected by her…” he makes an up-and-down motion with his hand. “Nonstandard family lifestyle. And maybe other things. But you I would’ve pegged as a believer. After all, you were pretty quick on the uptake with the whole supernatural cult, universe is in sync, wholistic detective-ing thing.”

“That wasn’t exactly by choice,” Todd points out. “You know, at a certain point the universe was basically rubbing my nose in it.”

“Fair point.” Dirk rolls his head back so he can stare at the ceiling again. “But it’s not totally unbelievable, is it? That two people could be meant for each other?”

“That’s not how life works,” he says, parroting Farah’s earlier words. “Or people. Didn’t Marcham and Detective Hayes hate each other, anyway?”

“Oh yes, in the beginning,” Dirk agrees. “But I’m sure love won out in the end.”

“I’m sure,” Todd mutters.

The phone rings, derailing the conversation, and Dirk leaps to his feet and snatches it off the coffee table.

“Hello, Dirk Gently’s Wholistic Detective Agency,” he chirps. “Yes, that’s me! Oh, yes, assuredly. Fantastic. You don’t say?”

Todd sits up and looks at him. Dirk’s cheeks are flushed with excitement and his eyes gleam, and he jabs his finger at the phone and mouths “ _A case_!”.

He’s a bright spot in Todd’s apartment, in his life. The mark on Todd’s hip throbs like a physical wound. It’s funny that he’s found what he wants just as he’d stopped looking, and he still can’t have it. Hysterical, really.

-

“What if I told you I knew a couple who had matching ones?” Dirk says into the keyhole.

He’s fiddling with the lock while Todd keeps watch, and Todd’s getting antsy. They’re outside in broad daylight—anyone could walk by at any second.

“Are you almost done?” Todd asks, not even registering the question at first.

“Not nearly. It’s more difficult than they make it look in the movies!” Dirk straightens. “Can I have your phone?”

“You should get your own,” Todd tells him.

“Nonsense. That’s what you’re for.” Dirk takes the phone and thumbs it open easily. There’s a text conversation with Amanda in there, and Farah’s number, and the number for Dirk’s flip-phone, and not much else. Todd isn’t sure why it makes him feel shy to hand it over. He turns his gaze back to the hallway to distract himself.

“I met them at a party,” Dirk goes on.

“Huh?” Todd looks back. He’s crouched down with the phone balanced on his knee, expression intent.

“The couple. They were perfectly nice and well-adjusted, didn’t hate each other a bit. They showed me their—thingies.” Dirk’s jaw has a stubborn set to it. “The marks were real.”

Todd can’t hold back a sigh. Maybe if he indulges Dirk this whole thing will go away. “How do you know they weren’t tattoos?”

“Oh, you can tell,” Dirk says airily. Then quite suddenly he leaps up. “I got it!”

“My phone!” Todd dives for it as it goes flying and skids over the ground. The door swings open and Dirk steps back and the phone goes _crunch_ under his heel. Todd yelps in dismay.

“Whoops,” says Dirk, a hand over his mouth.

-

Later it turns out that the guy who sells Todd his new phone, paid for by Farah, is the same guy who’s been leaving cryptic and vaguely threatening graffiti all over Seattle, and he in turn was hired by a woman named Emilia Harrod.

Emilia, they discover through a series of coincidental meetings, is an incredibly wealthy but weird individual who is deeply involved in a number of conspiracy theorist groups, each of whom have their own private doomsday theories. As far as Todd can surmise she’s been playing them off each other, but to what end they have yet to stumble upon.

Also there may or may not be aliens; Todd is on the ‘may not’ side and Dirk is ecstatic.

Farah, meanwhile, seems not to have her head in the game. Todd isn’t a particularly empathetic person, but he feels like he should give it a go before Dirk brings it up. She isn’t easily offended, but she also pays their bills, their rent, and all of their various recreational expenses so he’d kind of like to stay on her good side.

The morning after they’ve met Emilia in an upscale bar downtown and pumped her for information on the nine-eleven-hoax-ers, Robert the graffiti artist, and possible aliens, he and Farah are alone in Dirk’s apartment. Dirk is chasing down breakfast and bus tickets to the university, where Emilia hangs out with a group of lizard-people-hoax professors and grad students, of which there are surprisingly quite a number.

Todd makes some coffee and tries to wrangle his thoughts into a straight line while Farah cleans her gun—well, one of her guns. He brings her the coffee and sits down across from her in an armchair.

“Is everything okay?” He asks, putting his mug on a coaster. Dirk is weirdly particular about cleanliness.

Farah screws the sight back on with vigour. “Everything’s fine.”

“Right.” He sits back. She finishes and gives the gun a last wipe down. “But it seems like everything’s not okay.”

She puts the re-assembled rifle in front of her on the table and gives him her full attention. “Well, it is.”

“Okay. But it feels like it’s not.”

Farah sighs explosively. “Fine. Do you have one?” She asks abruptly.

“What?” Todd furrows his brow.

“A mark.”

Fuck universal connectedness anyway, Todd thinks. Why did everything have to come back to this? But Farah deserves the truth if anyone does—she’s a good person. And Todd is trying not to be a liar, so he tells her.

“Yeah, I do.”

She nods like she was expecting it, and keeps nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, I thought so. You don’t know who she is?”

“No.” Todd shakes his head. “I’ve never met anyone else with one.”

“Good. It’s better that way.”

They drink their coffee in silence for a couple minutes, until Todd can’t handle the suspense anymore.

“You have one too, right?” He asks. “Who is it?”

Farah tenses. “It’s Lydia.”

“Oh. Shit.” He grimaces. “I’m sorry.”

“She doesn’t know. She’s fifteen and I—I’m never going to see her again,” Farah says, her voice wavering. He feels a visceral twist of sympathy. He can’t see her expression, because her eyes are fixed firmly on the coffee table, but her shoulders are set stiff like a shield against the world. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important anymore. I used to think it was the most important thing in the world, that it _meant_ something, but now I think it’s just the universe’s idea of a joke.”

“You could have gone with her?” His voice turns up at the end to make it a question.

Farah dismisses the suggestion with a sharp wave of her hand. “What the hell would I have told her? It’s not right. Better to forget about it.”

Todd thinks about Dirk and his pink, pleased face when Todd picked him up from the hospital and drove him to his apartment. He thinks about the way he glows with good humour when something nice happens to him in a way that’s both infuriating and heartwarming, like a particularly smug kitten. Or the way he slings an arm over Todd’s shoulder, because he’s a few inches taller and also because he’s obsessed with the performative aspects of friendship.

It’s not hard to think about Dirk. It is hard to think about some faceless girl and how she would fit into his life.

“You’re probably right,” he says.

-

Dirk is leaning over him when he comes to, face screwed up with worry. His hands hover in front of him like he wants to take action but doesn’t know quite what action to take. Todd’s lying flat on his back on the ground. Everything hurts—getting hit by a car is exactly as painful as he’d expected.

He groans and shuts his eyes against the sun.

“Couldn’t we have let her go?” He says.

“She’s _crucial_ to the case,” Dirk protests. “But I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”

“No!” Todd sighs and tries to get up. There’s a sharp stabbing pain in his ribs so he lays back down. “Fuck.”

“Do you need the hospital?” Dirk asks tentatively. He’s crouching next to Todd’s shoulder, his long legs folded up.

“Just take me back to the apartment. Farah knows first aid, right?”

Dirk frowns. “Maybe?”

Todd gestures him forward. “Help me up.”

He gets an arm around Dirk’s shoulders and Dirk wriggles his hand under Todd’s armpit where it spans his ribs—the ones that don’t hurt, thankfully. His hand is warm over Todd’s t-shirt, even compared to the asphalt and the setting summer sun. Dirk smells like leather and the fruity body soap he uses. It’s ridiculous, Todd tells himself firmly, not cute at all.

They stumble back to the rental car, awkward because Dirk is too tall to prop him up, and Todd finally notices Dirk looking down at him with an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face.

“Thank you,” he says. There’s a little line between his eyebrows, like he’s thinking too hard about something. In Todd’s experience, Dirk only ever thinks hard about what to order off the menu at a restaurant. He wonders what’s going through his head.

“What for?”

“For trying to stop Emilia,” Dirk says. “For believing me when I said she was important.”

“Well, she is the central figure in our investigation,” Todd points out.

“Yes, but—” Dirk scrunched up his eyebrows further. “I know it’s not always easy to keep going on faith when everything starts to fall apart. Now that Emilia’s gone we might never solve the case.”

Todd snorts. “That’s what I get paid to do, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” Dirk smiles down at him. “Thanks anyway, though.”

“You’re welcome.” He elbows Dirk in the ribs. Dirk’s hand tightens on his side and he ducks his head, ears going pink.

  
In the car as Todd is drifting off he starts talking again, just chatter. Todd lets it drift over him until something catches his attention.

“It’s all about faith, isn’t it?” Dirk says. He takes a corner too sharply, leaning intently over the wheel. “Friendships, love, soulmates. Detective-ing. It’s about how much you trust the universe. Or me, I suppose.”

Todd turns his head further into the window. The cool glass feels nice on his forehead. “Why doesn’t everyone have a soulmate, if it’s so important?” He mumbles.

Dirk looks over at him. “I don’t know. Maybe most people have the proper connections already. Maybe they’re only meant to bring people together who need a bit of help.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Todd says. “Lots of people have shitty relationships and shitty connections. Is that how it’s supposed to be?”

The car jerks to a stop at a red light and he hisses between his teeth as his ribs are jostled.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dirk says, wincing. “Are you okay?”

“Just—drive like a normal person,” Todd groans.

“Anyway,” Dirk goes on, “when you’re in a terrible relationship it doesn’t mean the universe isn’t giving you signs—it just means you’re ignoring them. A mark is a sign you can’t ignore. I mean, you can, but why would you? It’s a sign of something _fantastic_.”

“Whatever,” Todd says. He’s drifting in and out of consciousness. He’s just really fucking tired, tired of getting hurt and tired of trying to avoid getting hurt. “I don't want to argue about this anymore.”

-

Unfortunately for Todd, the stream of creation—or whatever the hell it is conducting the universal orchestra—just won’t let it go. It happens like this:

They’re at the university again, this time in the middle of the night. Or maybe more accurately at this point, the wee hours of the morning. They’re on the top floor of the physics wing, and aliens—or weirdos in incredibly elaborate masks, as Todd likes to think of them—have got them trapped in a corridor. There’s a bank of windows at one end, a series of offices lining either side, and a set of double doors capping off the hallway which Dirk has propped shut by jamming a chair under the handles. Todd can see the very convincingly costumed would-be marauders milling about on the other side of the doors.

“We’re stuck,” he announces. Dirk pirouettes and scans the hall, like they might have missed a hidden fire exit or something. “We’re stuck here and we’re going to be skewered by angry dudes in lizard masks as soon as they figure out they can bust the doors open.”

“Don’t say that!” Dirk shushes him with a wild gesture. “They have excellent hearing.”

“Oh, sorry, are you an expert on fake alien physiology now?” Todd crosses his arms. “If you have any aces up your sleeve now would be a great time to use them.”

“I don’t see what magic tricks have to do with our predicament,” Dirk says crossly. “Never mind. What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” Todd says. Panic makes him a bit sullen. “You threw my new phone in the river, remember?”

“Ah, yes, that was shortsighted of me.” Dirk frowns. “Wait, I know.”

He starts trying the office doors. Todd glances back at the end of the hall just as there’s a rousing thump and the double doors shudder.

“I think they’ve figured it out!” He yelps.

“Aha!” Dirk yells, flinging open the door to the last office. “This one! Come on.”

Todd follows him in and slams the door shut behind them. “Why do none of these doors have locks?”

“Probably no one ever anticipated the need to lock themselves in their own office,” Dirk says. “Oh, good, it’s almost three AM.”

“Now what?” Todd looks around. It’s a pretty standard office; there’s a desk, a bookshelf, an ancient computer and a spinny office chair which Dirk flings himself into.

“Have you ever hacked a computer? Well, we probably don’t have time for that. Here, take these. They look useful.” Dirk pulls down a thick stack of papers from the bookshelf and shoves them at Todd. “We should go.”

“ _Where_ are we going?” Todd fumbles with the papers, clutching them to his chest.

“Out the window, of course.” He leaps to his feet.

“Oh, no.” Todd shakes his head. “No, no, no. I am not jumping out a window with you. I’ll take my chances with the lizard men.”

“Don’t be silly, they’ll eat you alive.” Dirk pries open the window. It is, in fact, large enough for someone to crawl through, if a person was so inclined. He swings a leg up over the sill until he’s hanging half in, half out of the window and braces himself there. “Now, we wait.”

“What? Why?” Todd hears an almighty bang as the doors give, and the growl of voices coming closer. He looks wildly about the office, but there’s not so much as a paperweight he could throw at them. He really wishes Farah had come along this time. It’s always when they need a well-armed weapons expert around most that she’s decided to take a night off.

“We have to wait for the right _time_ ,” Dirk explains patiently.

“The right time to jump out a fourth floor window?” Todd demands.

“Yes, of course!” Dirk reaches out and grabs his arm. “Look, Todd, do you trust me?”

Todd grimaces. Against all his better instincts he _does_ trust Dirk, but admitting it is almost physically painful. “Yes, I trust you. But there’s a difference between trusting someone to have your back and trusting them to procure an act of God—”

“Then jump,” Dirk says.

“I—”

“Now, Todd. Jump!”

The office door swings open and the masked lizard people come marching into the room. Dirk ducks under the lintel and when Todd looks back, he’s gone.

“Shit, _shit_.” Todd clambers up after him.

“Flesh,” one of the lizard people growls, arms outstretched. They’re wearing some kind of horrifically realistic gloves and they’re coming at him far too quickly. “Warm flesh!”

With a little shriek that he will deny to the end of his days, Todd throws himself out the window.

He expects this to be the end of him. Instead he slams into something decidedly not concrete, still solid enough to knock the breath out of him but bouncy and giving. He slides and rolls and in the chaos he loses his grip on the papers Dirk handed him as he tries to grab hold of something. The squishy thing under him seems to be moving.

“Dirk?” He yells into the darkness.

“Todd!” Dirk yells back from somewhere close. He sounds equal parts relieved and shocked. “You jumped!”

There’s just enough light from the surrounding street lamps that Todd can see him a few feet away, clambering over piles of—something. They’re zooming along one of the university’s alleys in what must be the back of a truck. Under him the bags shift and slip away as he tries to stand up.

“It’s a garbage truck,” Todd says with disbelief. “Holy shit. We’re not dead. You got the universe to bring us a garbage truck.”

“Actually I just remembered the schedule,” Dirk says. He’s grinning as he slides in next to Todd. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t _awesome_.”

“More like awesomely terrifying!” A hysterical sort of euphoria bubbles up in him as he looks around. “Jeez, we really did that.”

“We really did.”

They look at each other for a moment and then dissolve into laughter.

“Oh my God, did you see the lizard people?” Todd mimes holding out his arms and trudging forward. “Warm flesh…”

“No! Were they really like that?” Dirk flops back against the trash bags, clutching his stomach as he giggles. Todd collapses next to him. His legs are definitely not steady enough to hold him up now.

They lean against each other as their laughter slowly dies away. Todd tips his head back to look up at the stars and the truck rattles along under them.

“Wow,” he says.

“Wow,” Dirk repeats, his voice gone quiet.

  
It takes them three hours to get back to Todd’s apartment, where they’re supposed to meet Farah at eight o’clock. By the time they finally stumble through the door they’re exhausted, dirty, and stinking of garbage. The adrenaline has definitely worn off and Todd is sore on top of his bruises from being hit by Emilia’s station wagon. He deposits the now filthy papers in a messy smear across his kitchen table and strips off his jacket and his shirt in one go.

“I’m going to shower,” he says, dropping them on a chair as he shucks off his shoes.

Dirk doesn’t answer. Todd glances over his shoulder. He’s standing very still, his cheeks pink under the grime.

“Yes, naturally,” he says when Todd raises his eyebrows. For a wild second, Todd entertains the idea of putting out an incredibly inappropriate suggestion regarding Dirk and himself and showering, but the boldness of this thought makes him suddenly tongue-tied and instead he turns away and shuffles down the hall as fast as his tired limbs will let him. Dirk is not interested, he tells himself sternly. He’s just socially maladjusted.

Besides, he knows how this story goes: guy falls for his straight best friend, makes a move, and then things are awkward and terrible forever. In spite of everything Dirk is the closest he’s had to a best friend for a very long time and he desperately doesn’t want to fuck it up.

He takes a long and leisurely shower and almost falls asleep under the hot water more than once. When he finally emerges he’s a little less sore and much cleaner. He’s towelling his hair dry when the door opens and Dirk sticks his head in.

“Todd, do you want breakfast? I’m ordering from—oh.”

“Dude, knock.” Todd lowers the towel. Dirk is staring at his—no, not there. A little up and to the left. _Oh_.

“You have a tattoo,” Dirk says.

“No.” The truth falls from his lips before he can stop it. His heart clenches as all the goodwill and relief the night generated drains away. He knows—he knows it’s stupid to keep hoping when it comes to Dirk, and maybe that’s why he says it. It’s stupid to try to hide it. To try to be normal when it’s so obviously not what the universe wants.

“You have a mark.”

“Yeah,” Todd says shortly, the towel hovering in front of him.

“But you said you didn’t believe in soul mates.” Dirk looks flabbergasted. “I can’t believe all this time I thought—”

His expression is rapidly shifting from shocked to delighted, and Todd doesn’t know whether it’s just a quirky obsession with the universe or something more specifically to do with him, Dirk’s best friend, and some misguided but ultimately good intention. Whatever it is he doesn’t want to deal with it in _any_ capacity.

He wraps the towel around his waist and covers the mark with jerky movements. “I don’t believe in soul mates,” he says. “It’s not real. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh.” Dirk’s face falls. He’s so open and easy to read, and sometimes Todd wishes he’d keep his emotions closer to his chest.

“I need some clothes.” He pushes past Dirk, shoulder brushing his chest.

“Sorry,” Dirk says, leaping back.

Todd grits his teeth. It doesn’t mean anything.

-

Dirk becomes quiet. It’s so unlike him that even Farah comments on it one day while they’re having dinner at the pub. Todd doesn't stick around to hear his excuse, ducks into the bathroom instead. The quieter Dirk gets the more frustrated he can feel himself becoming, fear of what’s going to happen between them making him angry.

He splashes water on his face and scowls into the sink. It’s fine. They have the documents they rescued from Gerard Clarke’s office now, they can bring everything to the client and get paid. Farah will be happy, Dirk will be pleased, and Todd—will continue being Todd. He thinks Dirk might be upset at him for lying, but he’s sure that it’ll blow over.

He’s pretty sure, at least.

Dirk is gone when he gets back.

“He’s gone to drop off the papers. We should head to Emilia’s house and make sure the original stuff is destroyed,” Farah says, standing up. She drops a couple of twenties on the table. “I don’t know what’s going on with you guys but I liked it better when he didn’t go off on his own.”

“Trust me, so did I,” Todd sighs.

It’s not as simple as that, naturally. They end up in a full-out firefight with the lizard people on one side and Todd, Farah, and the re-materialized Emilia on the other. Todd shoots someone for the first time and is promptly sick. As a bonus, the bodies disappear as soon as they hit the ground.

“They’re being beamed back up to the mothership,” Emilia yells from across the hall as she jams another cartridge into her gun. “They’re not actually dead. The same ones keep coming back.”

“How can you tell?” Farah demands. “They all look the same to me!”

Todd tries to aim like she told him and gets one of them in the arm. Ichor spurts out of the wound and the lizard person lets out an unholy shriek. He covers his mouth, stomach threatening to come back up his throat.

“Get it together!” Emilia shouts at him.

Todd stops looking at the ones he’s shot after that and focuses on who he’s going to shoot next. It’s not as hard as he thought it would be.

Just when it looks like they’ll be well and truly outnumbered, Dirk and Professor James Harrod arrive in dramatic fashion to save the day. Professor Harrod is wearing something that looks like it belongs in a Ghostbusters movie and Dirk wields what he later insists is an ‘alien-zapping ray gun’, although Emilia gives it a much more thorough and scientific-sounding explanation. The lizards turn tail and run pretty soon after that.

Emilia is less than pleased to find out that her husband hired a holistic detective to find out if she was cheating on him, but concedes that perhaps all the late night meetings were cause for suspicion. As Farah picks her way through the piles of empty clothes and snatches up the various sharp and shiny things the lizard people had left behind, Dirk collapses against the wall next to Todd.

“Aliens,” he says triumphantly.

Todd nods weakly. “Yep.”

“I need a nap,” Dirk tells him, and for a second things are a little bit normal.

  
It turns out to be a lovely, sunny morning, and Todd can’t sleep. Dirk is sprawled out on his couch, so he makes coffee as quietly as he can and drinks half of it standing up in the kitchen.When he comes back out Dirk has kicked off the blankets and his shirt is riding up over his stomach. There’s a dark smudge on his hip that catches Todd’s eye.

He leans closer.

“Todd?” Dirk says sleepily, propping himself up on his elbows. His hair is tousled and falling into his face and he looks young and vulnerable, eyes still half-closed, lips parted.

“You have the mark.” Todd puts his mug down on the coffee table with exaggerated care. He feels lightheaded. “The same mark.”

Dirk sits up abruptly and yanks the blanket up. “I—no—!”

“You didn’t say anything,” Todd says.

“You told me it didn’t mean anything!” Dirk’s cheeks redden. “That it didn’t matter.”

“Because I thought I’d never—” Todd blurts out. “And you were here, and I wanted—”

He groans and rubs his hands over his face, words failing him.  
  
“Todd.” Dirk clasps his wrists with cool fingers and pulls his hands away. Todd can feel his hands shaking, and that’s what makes him look up. “Did you _like_ me?”

“Yeah,” Todd breathes.

“Do you still?” He looks like he’s holding his breath.

“Yes,” he whispers.

“Good,” Dirk says, leaning in. “Because I like you, too.”

The kiss is soft and careful, and it hurts like something is spooling out of him and into the universe. But it’s a good pain, and the pressure in his chest might crush him but it might be something like happiness, too.

He exhales in a combination of fear and relief when Dirk pulls back. Dirk’s eyes are fully open now, clear and bright in the morning sun. He gives Todd a goofy grin.

“I thought you didn’t want a soulmate.”

Todd presses his forehead against Dirk’s. “I don’t,” he says, because it’s true. “I just want you.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
